Today we’re looking at a famously weird plane from the 1920s:
the Bonney Gull. This whacky looking plane was the brainchild of Leonard Warden Bonney, and although
it looked somewhat insane, the Bonney Gull was in many ways very innovative and ahead of its time.
Leonard Bonney was an aviator who fell in the category of that first wave of pioneers
that sprang up between 1900 and 1914. In fact, he was lucky enough to be taught by Orville Wright,
who gave him flying lessons in 1910, and he flew with the Wright Exhibition Team
that operated during 1910 and 1911. Bonney quickly proved to be a gifted,
but careful, aviator, and in his early years he also had the most important quality of all: luck.
Not only did he complete multiple demonstration flights in the Wright Model B pusher without
incident, but he also survived a serious crash in a monoplane – when, at 1,200 feet
the elevator cable parted, and he lost control. After this, most of his early aviation career was
spent as a test pilot and instructor at various companies between 1912 and 1914.
Uninterrupted employment in those days was hard to come by, as the aviation industry was still
in its formative years, and he often moved from job to job. This, combined with being
an instructor for both the Army and Navy during the first world war, gave him a broad wealth
of experience with different aircraft. And so, by the mid-1920s Leonard Bonney
was considered an experienced aviator who had a thorough understanding of aircraft design…which
made it all the stranger when he decided to design and build the Bonney Gull.
In the earliest days of aviation, many flying machines had been built to imitate
the wing shape of various birds, but this had proven to be an impractical approach.
However, Leonard Bonney was somehow convinced that he could do better than his forbears and finally
achieve the perfect wing form, thus ushering in a new generation of sleek, bird-like planes.
He had decided to base his wing design off that of a seagull, a bird that he was incredibly fond of,
and he went through great pains to achieve as close an imitation as possible. This included
but was not limited to taking plaster casts of a seagull’s wings, and tying various weights to
some unfortunate seagulls to see how much they could lift – neither experiment was looked on
with kindness by the seagull, and I expect he received many a screwed peck in retaliation.
The task of building the physical attributes of a seagull into his plane was a daunting one,
however Bonney persisted. He was also thorough, building multiple models with alterations and
improvements with each iteration, and he also had one tested at a wind tunnel operated by MIT.
Work eventually began on the full-scale Bonney Gull in 1926,
with construction being done with the help of the Kirkham Company,
who had experience in building one-off aircraft – though perhaps nothing as ambitious as this.
The design of the aircraft was as unique as it was innovative. For one thing,
it was a low-wing cantilever monoplane, and one whose wing was of metal construction and had no
exposed struts or wires – which was certainly considered a very modern concept in 1926.
It featured an enclosed cockpit, again an uncommon feature for the time,
and this held two comfortable leather seats and a modern instrument and control panel.
The landing gear, too, was advanced. The main wheels were connected to the fuselage with single
streamlined struts, and they had independent brakes. Unlike many aircraft at the time,
which featured tail skids, the Bonney Gull had a steerable
tailwheel housed in a streamlined fairing. By far and away the most modern aspect of
the Gull was the construction of the wings and control surfaces. Leonard Bonney wanted
his plane to be able to take off and land in a short a run as possible, and so he poured a
huge amount of time and effort into the design of the bird-like and incredibly complex wings.
Not only did they feature strong dihedral and anhedral, thus resembling that of a gull, they
could also be folded back for easy storage, and they also had two design features that would not
make mainstream appearances for decades to come. Firstly, the Bonney Gull featured variable
incidence flight surfaces. The wings had a normal angle of attack of 10 degrees;
however, it was able to pivot around the main spar to increase this angle all the way up
to 45 degrees. This was done by a hydraulic mechanism that was controlled by the pilot;
under normal operation, the wings would be put to the sharpest angle of attack upon the moment
of landing, thus acting as a speed brake and significantly reducing the distance required for
a safe landing run. Wether Bonney intended to use them during flight, as well as landing, remains
unknown for reasons we will come to shortly. The second radical design feature was that of
variable wing sweep. The inboard sections of the wings featured large flaps; however, the
outer sections of the wings were designed to sweep forward and backwars through an arc of 20 degrees,
and they were also hinged to act as ailerons. Like the angle of attack,
this too was controlled by a mechanism in the cockpit, which combined with everything else would
have made flying a somewhat complex affair for the pilot – as everything had to be done manually.
By the end of 1927 the Gull was all but complete, and it was finished with a 9-cylinder,
180hp Kirkham radial engine. Though it may have boasted advanced design features, the
Gull – with its fat body and odd looking control surfaces – did not look easy to fly, and Leonard
Bonney struggled and eventually failed to find a willing test pilot, and so he did it himself.
In early 1928 he completed a test hop which ended up breaking the landing gear,
however this was repaired and by early May he was ready to perform the first test flights. Despite
the pleas from friends, colleagues, and several fellow aviators who had known him for years,
he prepared the aircraft for takeoff from Curtiss Field on the 4th of May 1928.
There is some video footage of the first and only flight of the Bonney Gull, however I didn’t feel
like a) Paying 300 pounds for a non-perpetual licence of 60 second clip that would expire after
just a few year, or b) receiving a copyright claim for posting an unlicensed version,
and so we’re just going to have to deal with some still photos – thank you British Pathe…
But, grumbling about the cost of footage aside, Leonard’s flight did not go well.
After an initial take-off run that almost ended in a ground looping incident, the Bonney Gull
raced across Curtiss Field and lifted into the air. All seemed to be well as it made its climb,
but at around 100 feet it suddenly pitched over, and the plane nose-dived into the ground.
Leonard Bonney was thrown violently from the plane on impact, suffering serious injuries,
and despite some news articles at the time claiming he died on impact, he was in-fact
taken to Hospital where he would sadly succumb to his injuries later that day.
There is no definitive answer for what caused the accident, some suspected a control cable failed,
others thought that the plane was just simply unstable, and a few thought that
Leonard Bonney had perhaps pulled the wrong lever in his cockpit. Whatever the cause was,
the world was thus deprived of a forward thinking, albeit somewhat eccentric aviator.
As always thank you all very much for watching, and a special thank you of course to the Patreons,
with a special shoutout to Dellairdo, Kevin, Bane, FB, Christopher R, and Tronathon for their support
as wing commander tier patreons. Thank you all so much, and I’ll catch you all next time, goodbye.